COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

"In the future, everyone will have access to VA health care for fifteen minutes."

Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Whole Port Thing, considered ...

It's pretty obvious to me that there was a quid pro quo cut somewhere along the line - one the Administration can't talk about.

It also seems that the ones who know ALL the details about the decision to back the deal are the ones sticking out their necks to let it go through.

Obviously, Congress can't keep a secret.

If the Bush Administration really wants this thing to go through, then I think everyone else needs to get back on their meds. Yes, even Michelle Malkin.

Dubai is the biggest US Navy base outside of the US, I'm told.

We're gonna need it, in any tangle with Iran. Kuwait is too vulnerable, either now or later, to a sudden thrust from Iran. We'll need Dubai to support operations to defend Kuwait, if the Iranians decide to attack in that direction, in an attempt to cut off the Army in Iraq from its logistical base.

You can't run everything from Diego Garcia. I think any serious wargame of a wider Persian Gulf war with Iran would back me up on this. Look at sorties and turnaround times, especially. Losing a land-based airfield in Dubai would seriously erode the optempo of any large-scale air campaign in Iran. We rely on the UAE to allow the use of its facilities in any operation against Iran.

Don't forget, Iran has some serious Exocet missile capability, and they can do some major damage to shipping in the Straits of Hormuz. If they do, we're going to need the repair facility at Dubai. You can't count on Yemen, and you may not be able to protect Kuwait against a determined Iranian move.

Iran couldn't hold Kuwait City. But they could do a helluva lot of damage if they put their minds to it.

If Al Qaeda wants to infiltrate a port operations company, they can do it no matter who's in charge. It's just a matter of a couple of guys getting a job.

It's clear that this is important to the commander in chief. Congress might have a beef, and I might have a beef, if I knew all the facts. But I don't. And neither does Congress, and neither does Michelle Malkin.

It's time to defer the decision to the people who DO know the facts--all the facts. The port deal should be allowed to go through.

I think, as usual, many politicians shot from the hip based on some perceived political advantage without getting the facts. One could argue that an organization / state that have made big changes after 9/11, especially if it was used by Al-Qaeda, should give one more confidence than an organization / state that has only rearranged the furniture (TSA). After all, the UAE most likely only has one terrorist list.